Titel: Can you add a Forum about remastering of Kanotix? Verfasst am: 03.10.2006, 23:08 Uhr

Anmeldung: 07. Okt 2005
Beiträge: 35

Hi everybody,
I saw a few of threads about remastered versions of Kanotix for many different goals. I think some of the usual Kanotix forums visitors are surely interested in exchanging opinions and tricks about the remastering. I think it should deserve a special forum.

What do you think about it?

Thanks,
Ciao,
Ugo

piper

Titel: RE: Can you add a Forum about remastering of Kanotix? Verfasst am: 04.10.2006, 14:48 Uhr

Team Member

Anmeldung: 03. Mai 2005
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Wohnort: out there somewhere

I don't think we need an "extra" forum just for remastering, their are however a "few" threads about it. If you have a good way of remastering Kanotix, feel free to post on one of those threads, it just "might" get to be a sticky. I do know alot of people (including myself) that are very interested in this subject, and who knows "what" can happen if enough people put in their 2 cents on the subject of remastering. Remember, this is just my opinion, if the webmaster himself feels like a seperate forum is a good idea I am all for it, I just don't think there is enough knowledge on the subject with remastering Kanotix to have it's own forum. (me, myself, wouldn't mind seeing one, but doubts it will happen).

Please don't get the wrong idea on this post, we (forum users,posters) would love to see a good how-to on the subject that works, and works well.

Titel: RE: Can you add a Forum about remastering of Kanotix? Verfasst am: 04.10.2006, 15:25 Uhr

Anmeldung: 05. Okt 2004
Beiträge: 2069
Wohnort: w3

This is repeating what I posted at another place, however the topic makes it now a good place for a sticky topic, because we are continiously confronted with questions from people who would like to re-master Kanotix.

I hope you re-masters are aware of the following:

1) It is impossible for our support team to assist users of non-official re-masters here - we actually can just tell them to ask the re-master. So, you will be at your own supporting your users. That's very sad for us as we try hard to help everybody, and it's bad for Kanotix' reputation as those users think they still use Kanotix and don't get proper help here.

2) Every re-master splits knowledge, manpower, users and contributions off Kanotix, instead of adding it into the project. There are many different ways you could contribute to Kanotix, and people who contribute are more likely to influence the future of the upcoming releases.

3) Kanotix provides a lot of very clever alternatives to re-mastering, which are fully supported and appreciated here. In my experience most ideas for costuming the Live-CD or a HD-install can be solved better - and fully supported - with one of those technologies. Please read up and understand for example how fromiso, unionfs, fromusb can be used in different hardware combinations, together with costum Debian meta-packages and basic Bash & Perl scripts.

4) Although altering the content of a CD and make it booting somehow can be accomplished, re-mastering Kanotix in a proper way is much more and not trivial at all. A lot of professional knowledge and a skilled team for testing and debugging is needed. Please be aware that HowTos working for other distributions (inkl. Knoppix) will not work with Kanotix due to major differences in technologies used. And be assured, even the best finally successful Kanotix re-master I have seen in the last 2 years was slow and buggy compared to the original.

Those are some of the reasons why we do not help people re-mastering at all. Feel free to explore alternatives which are supported, feel free to explain your problems and projects here and we will strive hard to find other - probably better - solutions together with you. Also in special cases Kano was always willing to build customized re-mastered editions of Kanotix - please contact him directly for his requirements for such work. Hiring Kano for such is by the way not just a guarantee for quality, but also a very fine way to support the Kanotix project.

Greetings,
Chris

_________________"An operating system must operate."

ugo

Titel:Verfasst am: 04.10.2006, 15:58 Uhr

Anmeldung: 07. Okt 2005
Beiträge: 35

Let me repeat the answer I gave to Slam(=Chris) in a different and misplaced thread.

Thanks for having emphasized this thread.
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

Dear Slam (=Chris),
I understand very well your point of view and, BTW, let me say that I consider the Kanotix forum the quickest and most competent support forum I've ever seen in the Linux world.

Let me try to explain my point of view. Perhaps this is a common point of view for other "remaster" people. I've no ambitions to build a "my" distro: I've not enough knowledge in computer science and in Linux too to do it; moreover, for my work, I should not waste time to this aim. I agree that continuously adding new distros split the knowledge and the manpower in an unuseful way.
Nevertheless, I'm in contact with a not negligible number of potential Linux users (~40 new students per year plus other people) and I know that Kanotix is nearly perfect for them (BTW, I've installed Kanotix in the PC's classroom), but there is a little of work they should do to adapt Kanotix to their needs. I know very well that even a little difficulty will discourage them and they will try to do homework with Windows (but this is bad for many reasons: it's not the same environment they have in the classroom, it's not the same environment they'll use if they'll seriously do applied math in the future, and so on). Thus, my idea is just to add something to Kanotix (you can see a rough list below), in order to make as easier as possible the first impact with Linux of my students.
I think that it would be a big mistake if you (Kanotix developers) are too rigid about remastering. Indeed, doing this, I think that you'll not support the Kanotix reputation, because simply Kanotix still continue to not exist for many potential users! Let me just add that the average student of a first year course in Mathematics don't know that there are different Linux distros and, often, simply don't know about Linux. If they'll not have a simple access to Linux, they'll reject. In the future such students will work in other universities, companies or simply at home and they could spread the knowledge about Kanotix, I think that there are much more possible advantages than risks for the Kanotix team.

From the techical point of view, in the past I've essentially followed the notes in
http://www.knoppix.net/wiki/Knoppix_Remastering_Howto
plus some other ones found in a few magazines and I had no problem neither with knoppix nor with DSL.
I naively thought that with Kanotix the story was more or less the same.

If there are other technologies (which ones?) different from the remaster to solve my problem, I would be glad to consider them.
Here there is a list of the things I need to add to Kanotix:
1-some package useful for doing basic programming and mathematics : tex/latex, xfig, gdb, emacs, etc.
2-scilab (you can freely download it, but it's not GPL)
3-add the italian labels of KDE
4-change something in /etc/skel in such a way a browser start from the short notes about the use of Linux, add some bookmarks useful for the students, etc.
5-change grub so that all the entries with the german keyboard are replaced by new ones with the italian keyboard.
I think it's all, if you think I can do it in a different and a simpler way, please let me know it.

From a practical point of view, I don't ask for a complete support of the "remasters", but in my opinion a forum section and some advices would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
ciao,
Ugo

ugo

Titel:Verfasst am: 08.11.2006, 22:31 Uhr

Anmeldung: 07. Okt 2005
Beiträge: 35

Hi everybody,
since I'm a little scared by the previous reply posted by Chris, I had an idea that could be a good compromise.

Let me roughly describe my idea.
I would to do a "Kanotix+something easy remaster". I mean that I would to NOT CHANGE ANYTHING IN THE /cdrom/KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX file. I would just add some explanations for newbees about how to use Kanotix (perhaps I could erase the memtest to have enough bytes to add something). Such a simplified procedure should require just the usual last step of the remastering process, i.e. creating the iso file.
Therefore, I could do a second CD of extras containing all the packages I think the students need plus a short script for the installation of those packages after the HD install of Kanotix.
If there still will be a Kanotix-lite version I could merge these 2 Cd's in one.

I've some technical questions in order to see whether my idea can be used in practice or not.
First, do you think that a remaster of Kanotix WITHOUT CHANGING ANYTHING IN THE /cdrom/KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX file requires a special expertise? I don't think so, one must be careful just about the size of the iso file (to fit in a single CD) and to use GRUB.
Moreover, will there be a lite version also for the future versions of Kanotix? This is unclear to me.
Finally, I think that if both Kanotix and the extra packages are in the same CD, then it is possible to install the extras by working as a live CD. (Of course, this would require to have a good amount of RAM). Am I right or not?

1) It is impossible for our support team to assist users of non-official re-masters here - we actually can just tell them to ask the re-master. So, you will be at your own supporting your users. That's very sad for us as we try hard to help everybody, and it's bad for Kanotix' reputation as those users think they still use Kanotix and don't get proper help here

Now I understand the guys in #debian ...

AlexB

Titel:Verfasst am: 14.12.2006, 06:31 Uhr

Anmeldung: 13. Jun 2005
Beiträge: 103

I'm also interested in this but for different reasons than stated above. My reasons are:
1. Customized software that I need and not a more generic product
2. To improve my understanding of Linux and better my knowledge.
3. A smaller and more leaner iso image

Just based on reason number 1 alone you should understand that I'm doing something for me only, hence no users and no splitting. Furthermore when I learn new techniques then I might be able to do more support and contribution to Kanotix or others.

My understanding is that this is an open source project. Well why do you not want to enhance knowledge? Spreading knowledge is a good thing not a bad thing.

As you know already that if anyone wants to make a new distro. that it's a lot of work and needs a team. It's not an easy thing to do. So no community will be split as far as I see. And we already see iso's being remastered for one thing or another (like beryl for example) but they're not meant as a distro they're more like a showcase/proof of concept.
So again I don't see the ones that successfully remastered splitting the community at all.

Just my 2cents worth.

And yes I do believe in open software and in spreading knowledge.

mai77

Titel:Verfasst am: 10.05.2011, 14:21 Uhr

Anmeldung: 08. Mai 2011
Beiträge: 18

the distro quite is adaptable. if anyone would like to get into detail about adaptions, please specify in this thread ! KANOTIX ROCKS !!